Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Why don't guys field dress their deer?

Where I hunt, the coyotes make short work of any gut pile left behind. Last year I made the faux pas of leaving my knife behind- when I went back at first light the next day to retrieve it you couldn't find any sign of a gut pile.

Gut where it falls basically.

Drag out.

We have a few coyotes in the UP - it's never been an issue with seeing deer in that same stand again. Pile is usually gone by morning.

Most places I hunt are no vehicles. So I will gut and drag if its less than 200yds or so, any more than that and I do the gutless quartering and carry out in a backpack. Frankly I am getting to dam old ( and fat) to drag a deer a half mile or more.

This

I just consider the source. Wasting meat is for slobs.

Pretty easy to get the tenderloins with 'no gut' method. Just make a slit behind the ribs up near the spine and you can get them right out. The guts will shift down and give you room to work. Get one, roll the deer over and get the other. I do the 'no gut' method all the time on elk where dragging one of those big suckers is not an option. On a deer it depend on how far the truck is. FWIW the ribs meat is also easy to get - same way. I remember a guy that had never seen it done before examining a spike bull I'd shot and used the gutless method on. His words "damn, there's not even any meat left for the magpies". Worth trying if you have to pack more than a 1/2 mile or so.

This may sound wierd, but I have always wanted to hunt somewhere so far off the beaten path, that I had to quarter my harvest up and pack it out on my back. It just seems like that kind of work would add some extra joy and satisfaction to a successful hunt. You don't really get the opportunity to get way off the path here in Kentucky.

The no gut quartering isn't all that much extra work. its maybe 20 minutes and is a lot cleaner than gutting.

There's a place I go where public ground backs up to private and I can kill a decent white tail every time I hike in. No one else will go back in there because they don't want to work that hard for a whitetail. There is something uniquely satisfying about a 7 mile or so round trip to shoot a deer that most only want to put a foot outside their truck to shoot.

Cleaner kills. Not sure how taking out the brain with a rifle is less clean than a bolt to the brain....

You sound like my type of person. I enjoy the extra sweat when needed.

I also appreciate loading one on and taking back to camp on the samurai. And then a nice mixed drink while hanging it and anotehr after skinning and gutting.

OTOH if headed home in a hurry and its cool, not uncommon to rip the guts and grab two 20 pound bags of ice and toss in cavity and leave deer in the bed of the truck in the camper....only a 2 hour drive.

Come out west and pack an elk out by yourself. You will swear you'll never do that again.........until next year! lol There is a true satisfaction in hunting and packing solo that many will never experience.

I gut them where they fall leaving heart, lungs and liver in. Take those out at home cause I don't want to waste the heart or liver.

some folks like lungs at home. Others take bags for the organs and leave the lungs in the woods....

My paternal grandmother was pretty tough woman, who homesteaded by herself in central Montana shortly after World War one. She was also a very good rifle shot and avid hunter. When she was in the hospital with terminal cancer in November of 1960, several family members came to visit--and when not visiting Grandma B, went deer hunting. She kept a supply of plastic bags in next to her hospital bed, handing them out all the hunters, telling them not to forget the heart and liver.

I have yet to meet a Montana hunter who brings a deer back without gutting it in the field, but life is different in various parts of the country.

Was on a deer lease in SE Alabama, none of the locals would dress their deer. Most hauled them to the sign in shack and waited for their buddies to show up so they could show them off. Nothing like watching a 60# doe swell up in the 80 degree heat. Then off to the processor.

I asked the processor about it, said it was a local thing and that only a small number of folks from that area dressed their deer in the field.

Very likely. I went on my first real deer hunt when I was in college 32 years ago in middle Georgia and killed my first deer. It then occurred to me that we had to "do something" with the dead deer and when I mentioned it my hosts said, "we'll take it to the processor", and thus I was introduced to the concept. It cost about $35 in those days to take a deer in whole and come back in a few days and pick up your cubed steak and hamburger all nicely packaged for you. It is about $75 or $80 now depending on what you have done. Unless logistics dictate that you need to gut the deer to make it easier to drag out, if you are going to go the processor route, there is absolutely no need to gut it. Most guys I have hunted with go this way. I know guys who have hunted their whole lives, killed piles of deer, and never cleaned one.

It makes sense in a lot of ways. If you are working a job, have kids, and honey-dos, processing a deer takes time away from that, and you probably only get to hunt on the weekends as it is. Obviously because of the warm weather, hanging a deer and letting it age outdoors is off the table, so you are going to need coolers and ice or an extra fridge or some arrangement out of the norm. You will need a grinder if you want burger or sausage. The processors make all that go away for a reasonable fee.

I do my own because 1) I have the time 2) I am picky and nerdy about making sure the meat I get was from the deer I killed, and 3) I am a cheap bastid! I've saved enough on processing fees over the years to somewhat offset the gas, license and lease fees, and other expenses that come with hunting...probably about 3 grand over a decade.

Even so, I don't gut the deer in the "field" because would you believe it, the place I get to hunt now forbids it because the owner does not want "guts and carcasses on his land". I could try and explain to him that the yotes and buzzards would clean it all up over night but choose to keep my mouth shut and just thank him for letting me hunt because the hunting on this property is tremendous and it does not cost me much. Plus with the temps as they are now, if you open one up in daylight hours, the blowflies will just about take it from you, which personally grosses me worse than one possibly swelling a little before I can get to it. In my experience, that does not hurt a thing.

My home is very close to where I hunt so I take my deer back to the house and do everything there. Guts, heads and hides get buried in my garden.

As Mule Deer says, things are different in different areas of the country. I guess we all do what we have to do, what works best in each situation.

The processor there charged $60 to dress/cape. Then more fees for doing the meat. Ground was 50 cents a pound. Everything else went up from there. The old lady that checked stuff in and took the orders always said they didnt make any money off of me, cause my stuff came in quartered.

I've lived and hunted in the midwest, east coast, Texas, and Montana. I can tell you, you're not weird. There is definitely something rewarding about.




Dave

I haven't hung a buck in years. Everything comes out quartered and in game bags. I could care less about the guy who kills a trophy on the beach, in a clearcut, or on the side of the road. More power to them though if that make them happy. Killing them in the mountains on a difficult hunt is what floats my boat.